Technology: Chess Prodigy $10,000 prize for a rising star

In just two weeks, the fastest-rising star in the world of chess won a major championship in Florida, trounced Danish grand master Bent Larsen and scored a sensational first-place tie with former British champion Tony Miles in a California tournament. Even more remarkable, the prodigy that achieved these triumphs is less than a year old. The prodigy is in fact a computer named Deep Thought.

For its performance on the chess circuit, Deep Thought has won the prestigious Fredkin Intermediate Prize for Computer Chess, a $10,000 award set up for the first computer to achieve a grand-master rating. The machine, designed...